Öræfajökull

Öræfajökull is the roof of Iceland. This ice-capped volcano rises straight from the narrow coastal plain at the southern tip of Vatnajökull, and on the rim of its summit caldera stands Hvannadalshnúkur, at about 2,110 metres the highest peak in the country. It is also Iceland's largest active volcano: a broad cone some 20 kilometres across, with an ice-filled caldera a few kilometres wide at the top and a fan of outlet glaciers, among them Svínafellsjökull, Skaftafellsjökull and Fjallsjökull, spilling down its flanks almost to the Ring Road.

Its gentle white profile hides a violent past. When the Norse settlers arrived, the mountain was called Knappafellsjökull and the land at its foot was a prosperous farming district known as Litlahérað. In 1362 the volcano erupted explosively, throwing out around ten cubic kilometres of pumice and ash, the largest explosive eruption in Iceland since settlement. Meltwater floods, pyroclastic flows and thick tephra buried the farms, and ash drifted as far as mainland Europe. The district lay empty for decades, and when people returned it took a new name, Öræfi, which originally meant a coast without harbours but came to mean "wasteland". The mountain was renamed after it. A smaller eruption in 1727–28 again sent deadly glacial floods across the lowlands.

Today the volcano lies within Vatnajökull National Park, and its western foot at Skaftafell is one of the most celebrated corners of Iceland, where birch woods, waterfalls and ice tongues meet within a short walk. The crevassed tongue of Svínafellsjökull has stood in for distant worlds on screen: scenes of Interstellar and Batman Begins were filmed on it. The ascent of Hvannadalshnúkur is a classic Icelandic mountaineering route, a long glacier climb that ends on a summit with views across the ice cap and down to the Atlantic.

Getting there

The Ring Road (Route 1) runs along the foot of the volcano between Skaftafell and the glacier lagoons to the east. The nearest town is Höfn, about 75 km to the east, and the nearest airport is Hornafjörður Airport (HFN) beside it, about 75 km away. Most travellers arrive from Reykjavík and Keflavík International Airport (KEF), driving east along the south coast on the Ring Road for some 330 km.